Above Us Only Sky (16 page)

After their night together, Daina talked and laughed more. She told Stasys about her coworkers and about the birds she encountered on the beach. She smiled. For Stasys, this openness was better than any confession of love. Days and weeks passed. Daina and Stasys slept in the same bed. Stasys thought that she sometimes looked at him strangely, almost accusingly, reminding him of when she'd called him “soldier boy,” and he had to look away because it was like she saw something threatening in him, something he didn't know about himself. It unnerved him, so he tried not to think on it. Sometimes he felt her wings shift and move, but they were always tightly folded against her back as she lolled beneath the sheets. She was not the girl he'd met in the dirt saucer. The jail cell had changed her.

In 1951, Daina lost a taste for her favorite cheeses. She ate broth and complained about indigestion. Stasys worried that she was sick. “You should stay home,” he said, but she wouldn't hear of it.

“I have to work.”

“And make everyone else sick?”

She threw up and felt better. Every day, she threw up at five p.m., just before leaving work. It was a purging. Maybe now that she was finally loving life, she would join her family. Maybe that was all that Saint Casimir had wanted from her in order to release her: a lust for life, an understanding of its worth—but now that she understood, now that the world's beauty wasn't wasted on her, she
wanted
to live. Eventually, she wanted to join her family, but not now, not yet. Her hair grew thicker and shinier, her stomach rounder. She worried that she had a tumor. One of her comrades at work told her, “You're going to have a baby.”

Daina didn't understand.

“I've never seen anyone more pregnant.”

“Pregnant?” Why hadn't she or Stasys considered this? They knew where babies came from. Daina crossed herself and concentrated on the sewing machine in front of her. Her back ached. Her ankles were swollen. She'd thought it was from the job. She could sleep anywhere.
Oh, Saint Casimir.
They were expecting a baby.

When she got home from work, she sat at the kitchen table waiting for Stasys. Her own breath seemed loud. When Stasys came in, he dropped his wallet on the table and went to the breadbox. “I am too hungry.” She hadn't been cooking dinner or packing his lunch.

She sat there, watching him, a blissful expression on her face.

“Are you all right?” He bit into a hunk of bread.

“I am having a baby.”

“No, you're not.” He was chewing. He couldn't chew fast enough.

“Yes, I am.”

“You're having a baby?”

“We're having a baby.”

He swallowed the hunk of bread and pulled a chair up to sit across from Daina. “How?”

“How do you think?”

“So, you're not sick?”

“I don't think so.”

Stasys began to cry, wiping the tears with the back of his sleeve. “I'm sorry.” He couldn't have stopped the tears from coming and so he wasn't sorry, but “sorry” had felt like the right thing to say. He wasn't sure what a man was supposed to say in this situation. He sometimes forgot that he had grown into a man. He squeezed Daina's hand. “I'm going to be a father.” Stasys Valetkys remembered his own father, a smart, generous man. A good husband with a gentle soul. Stasys's mother had been the disciplinarian and his father had been the consoler. “You'll be all right, son. You're a smart boy.” He'd shown Stasys affection. Stasys would be a good father. He would show affection. Right away, he imagined a son.

“And I'm going to be a mother,” Daina said.

“I love you,” he said. And then Stasys imagined a daughter, a beautiful smart girl like Daina. It would be a baby, a new life, boy or girl. Whichever. It did not matter.

Daina was grinning. She was not going to say “I love you.” That was fine by him. He had enough love for all of them.

Expectant, quiet in anticipation, their apartment took on its own voice as well as a hopeful breathing. In and out. Soon. Very soon. Life was coming. A beginning. There were new sounds and new sensations. They both heard the sea, even though it was nearly a mile away. In July, they felt the baby kick. In August, three days of heavy rains beat down and sounded like drummers squatted on the roof. The voices of children on the street floated through the open windows. The teakettle whistled and the bathwater ran. Tourists came and slept in the master bedroom. Daina and Stasys slept in the Jewish girl's bed, the porcelain doll at their side. They were in a waking dream, nesting and clasping hands. At night, Daina prayed to see a vision of her mother. Sometimes she thought she heard her mother singing. Daina had been to a doctor, who said that she should have a healthy baby. There was no reason why she shouldn't. Daina believed that the spirits of her family would be at the birth. Stasys was worried. What if their child was born with wings?

What would the doctors do? Would they let Daina bring the baby home? Would they hurt the baby? Would they let his wife come home? Every night, he prayed for a healthy child. He didn't care if there were wings, only that they could bring the baby home. He'd lost too much. He couldn't suffer the loss of a baby he hadn't even met yet.

In September, the tourists went home, and Stasys and Daina went back to the big bed. He stayed awake listening, resting his head on Daina's belly. Soon. Very soon. The house continued to whisper and breathe.

Across town, Olga and Bohdan danced three or four nights a week. In the darkness, Olga lay still while Bohdan used his fingertips to draw maps and diagrams of places he'd seen—before he'd lost his sight—across her stomach and thighs, up and down her legs. She closed her eyes. Bohdan was not too old for her. He was just right. They did not engage in sex, only intimacy. In the daylight, they played with the dog, Emma. Olga helped Bohdan in the kitchen. The other tenants whispered behind their backs. Bohdan could hear what they were saying, but he paid them no mind. “I bet the Russian girl doesn't pay him rent,” they said. “I bet the old man pays for sex with her.” Life was too short to be concerned with gossip. He did not care if Olga was Russian. She could be German or French. Even American. When he touched her face, which he did a lot, she always smiled for him. He knew that she was
not
always smiling. He sensed pain in her voice, but for him, she smiled. Sometimes they drank black-market whiskey. Always, they had a good time. When Olga told him about her sordid past, he said, “You were a child. It's not your fault.”

She touched his face the same way he touched hers, sensing his youth, the man he'd been, not the old man that he was.

At work, Olga kept insisting that she'd had nothing to do with Daina's arrest. She'd come to Palanga with a mission. Olga, the card-­carrying Communist, had a capitalist sensibility. If you worked hard enough, you got what you deserved. You got the handsome man.
Nothing is out of reach. I can have whatever I desire. I must be ruthless and single-minded.
Something in the slow pace of Palanga, the sweetness of Bohdan, the unconditional love of Emma had changed Olga. Something in the orderliness and cleanliness of this new life had transformed her. She couldn't fully own what she'd done. Not for the rest of her life. She only told Stasys, “I'm glad your wife is back.”

He nodded.

Olga worked hard at her job. Her illustrations had a fierceness that Olga, the woman, now lacked. The red lines, the hammer and sickle, were sharp. “What do you think, comrade?” she asked Stasys, seeking his approval.

“Fine,” he said. He couldn't make her go away. Sometimes he'd forget, for a split second, what she'd done to his wife. He'd start to talk to Olga about Daina and the baby on its way. Then he'd remember and stop himself.
Never mind.
From the corner of his eye, he watched her work zealously, a contentment on her face that hadn't been there the year before, and he understood too that if Daina hadn't been imprisoned, she might never have wanted to live, she might never have let him be the husband he yearned to be.

Stasys glared at the ridiculous words he was writing. He elbowed his typewriter, five and six keys clacking the paper at once. He chewed on his pencil. It was hard for him to think about anything but the baby on its way. The information office he and Olga shared fermented with hope.

On October 6, 1951, after twenty-four hours in labor, Daina delivered a daughter with a cone-shaped head and black eyes. The doctor told Daina that her eyes would change color, “and her head will round.” Daina looked in awe at her baby. She didn't see the black, sharklike eyes or the conical head. She saw the most beautiful baby in the world.

In the hallway, upon hearing that he had a healthy baby girl, Stasys asked the doctor, “Is there anything unusual?”

“What do you mean?”

“Anything different or peculiar?”

“I told you about her head, but that's standard with a forceps delivery.”

“Is Daina all right?”

“She lost a lot of blood. She's a bleeder. Weak, but she will be fine.”

Stasys took a deep breath and pushed the door open. His wife was most certainly not weak.

Walking past three other women in recovery, he went to Daina. “Are you disappointed?”

“About what?” Her eyelids were droopy.

He whispered, “That she doesn't have your wings?” He bit his knuckle. They had avoided this topic, but he couldn't any longer. He had to know how Daina felt.

“Of course not, Stasys.” She shook her head at his silliness. “Did you see her? She's amazing.”

Stasys peeked at the swaddled baby, at her five fingers on one hand, five on the other, at the smallness of her back. “She is.” He opened the blanket to touch each toe. Her eyes were squinty, her complexion ruddy, her chin dimpled. He kissed her forehead and tiny ears. Resting his palm on her fuzzy blond head, he looked at Daina. “I love you.”

Daina kissed him. “I'm tired.”

All total, there were six women in the recovery room. Each of them had had a healthy baby. Each of them had had her first baby. Today was an epiphany, a birthday for six mothers and six children, a wish that each of these children would one day raise the Lithuanian flag.

Stasys sat on the edge of Daina's bed, telling her, “You did it! You're wonderful. I love you so much.” Daina tugged at Stasys's shirtsleeve. Neither of them knew what the future held. Since the day they'd met, they'd merely been surviving. “I would like to name her Audra after my sister. Is that all right?”

“Whatever you want.”

Daina kissed the knuckle Stasys had been biting when he'd first asked if she was disappointed about the wings.

She whispered, “Come closer.”

Stasys leaned in, pressing his face to Daina's. “What is it?”

“I love you,” she said. “I'm glad that you were a boy and not a bear.” She scratched her cheek. “But I am very tired now.”

Daina handed the baby girl to Stasys, who was unsure what to do. He cooed and made
tic-toc
sounds with his tongue. Daina rolled over and closed her eyes. Stasys told the baby, “Your mother loves me. Did you hear that? She loves me.” He sat at Daina's side. He'd given up needing to hear those words, but just the same, they were music to his ears. When Audra started to cry and Daina didn't wake, he tried rousing her. The other mothers were feeding their babies while nurses in green uniforms skittered past. What had the doctor said? She's a bleeder? What did he mean? Stasys stopped one of the nurses. She was Russian. “I'm worried,” he said. The baby was wailing. “Can you check on my wife?” The nurse was petite with short, dark hair. She had deep lines above her lip that disappeared when she smiled. “The baby is hungry,” she said.

Stasys agreed.

The nurse checked Daina's wrist for a pulse, and then, shaking her head, lifted the blankets covering Daina's legs. “She's lost a lot of blood. I'll get the doctor.” Daina wore a peaceful expression. Audra's cries of hunger fell on deaf ears. Unconsciously, Stasys slipped his finger into the baby's mouth and whispered to Daina, “Don't go to sleep on me. You have to wake up.” He thought,
You've gone and done it to me, haven't you, Daina? You finally told me that you loved me, and now you're going to break my heart in two.
The nurse took the baby. Helpless, Stasys was herded toward a small waiting room while Daina was wheeled in the opposite direction.